A Trove of Zohars

Lawrence Weschler

$62.99

Hardback

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English

Hat & Beard
02 May 2023

Reference works

Series: Hat & Beard Editions

So

Lawrence Weschler was minding his own business, as all his stories

begin, when he got a call from Gravity Goldberg.

Gravity (her real name!) introduced herself as the Director of Public Programs and Visitor

Experience at The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. She was

calling, she told him, to apprise him of an upcoming show—an inaugural

exhibition, that is, of a recently uncovered trove of work by Shimmel

Zohar, a mid-19th-century Lithuanian immigrant photographer

(contemporary of Mathew Brady), who had chronicled the Jewish immigrant

community of the Lower East Side of 1860s–1870s Manhattan in

unparalleled detail, compiling a complete inventory of professions and

types. Or not. There was, she suggested, some slippage in the whole

story, and they were trying to find someone who might be willing to

investigate things, and they were wondering, might he be interested?

Thus

begins an antic tale of investigative perplex and vertiginous inquiry,

as Weschler tracks down Stephen Berkman, the wet-collodion devotee who

claims to have discovered the trove in question, but it’s a long and

loopy story. And indeed, Weschler’s account evolves into the fourth

volume of his ongoing “Chronicles of Slippage” series, doing for the

early history of photography and the long heritance of Judaism what the

series’ first volume, the Pulitzer-shortlisted Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder, once did for the history of museums and the phenomenology of marvel.

And

that’s just the half of it, for the main text sprouts a veritable

delirium of digressive footnotes (taking up more than half the book),

constituting what may be the closest we are going to ever get by way of

memoir from this confounding and beloved writer.

By: Lawrence Weschler
Imprint: Hat & Beard
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 203mm, Width: 139mm,
ISBN: 9781955125192
ISBN 10: 1955125198
Series: Hat & Beard Editions
Pages: 156
Publication Date: 02 May 2023
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

A widely honored journalist, Lawrence Weschler is the director of the New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University. He is the author of twelve books, works of creative nonfiction, including Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder, Vermeer in Bosnia, and, most recently, Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences. A graduate of Cowell College of the University of California, Santa Cruz, Weschler was for over twenty years a staff writer at The New Yorker, where his work shuttled between political tragedies and cultural comedies. He lives in New York City.

PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY

A Trove of Zohars

Lawrence Weschler

$62.99

Hardback

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